Monday, March 16, 2009

Apparently goat fucking is a problem in Florida. At least Sen. Nan Rich thought so. She was horrified to find out that bestiality is not a crime in Florida. While the Florida legislature, in their infinite wisdom, did ban gay couples from adopting children, they never got around to criminalizing bestiality—I suspect the latter hits too close to home while the former does not....

Sen. Rich went absurd when she said: “There’s a tremendous correlation between sexually deviant behavior and crimes against children and crimes against animals. This is long overdue. These are heinous crimes. And people belong in jail.”...

While Senator Rich was tripping over her own tongue, and making false statistical claims, the height of dumbth was reached by her fellow Democrat, Sen. Larcenia Bullard. Apparently the legislation that Rich is proposing makes it illegal to derive, or help others derive, “sexual gratification” from an animal. But there is some clause in the law saying that conventional dog-judging contests and animal-husbandry practices remain legal. Odd clauses, but then Sen. Rich is not particularly bright, as we’ve already seen.

However, the mere mention of animal husbandry put Sen. Bullard, or is that Dullard, into a frenzy. She shouted out: “People are taking these animals as their husbands! What’s husbandry?” Duh!

Fellow-legislator Sen. Charlie Dean attempted to explain to dullard Bullard that husbandry is the care and raising of animals. But Bullard was still hung up on the idea that people were marrying animals. Referring to the chimpanzee attack in Connecticut she said, “So that maybe was the reason the lady was so upset about that monkey?” Sure, that’s it. The chimp was her husband and the woman was upset because the police killed her husband. Exactly how dumb do you have to be to get elected in Florida?

And as my nomination for best philosophical musing of the day (in the category of What thoughts would social conservatives most object to?), here's a delightful little paragraph I cut out of the above for the sake of brevity:

Personally, I find human relationships quite complex enough and have no desire to walk on the wild side, But I’m not entirely convinced that said activities, as revolting as they tend to be, are a matter of criminality. Surely if one can eat an animal, and that goes on constantly, then a little hanky-panky is not nearly as severe. I personally would prefer ending up in someone’s bed as opposed to finding myself on his or her dinner plate. On the other hand I can’t say I’m strongly opposed to the law. There are thousands of laws far worse currently on the books. No doubt Nan Rich helped passed many of them.